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Violence Bag

"D'ya hear me, you swine? You're just like Jonie Mitchell!!! You're a DRIP!!" screamed the tousle-haired youth at the staggering, blood-splattered monster violently being beaten-up right before his glazed eyes.

"I hate you ... I hate you ... I HATE YOU!!" he continued to yell wildly above the noises-with the strength of ten-he vigorously pushed his way through the tightly ­packed crowd closing in for the final kill.

Suddenly he spat at Alice, hit his target, and his full-lunged voice carried the venomous words: "If I get hold of you, I'll rip your ugly head off you pervert" across the twenty feet that lay between him and the battered object of his disgust.

The abuse came fast, free and un­printable, as the young lady un­successfully trying to restrain him pitifully cried: "Don't, Oh God, please don't let them hurt him ... A­L-I-C-E I love you ... l really do."

Clambering over the wooden crash barrier, which was immediately reduced to mat­chwood under his heavily booted feet, this man possessed then sent three bullnecked police guards scattering like ten-pins followed by one last desperate gesture in which he attempted to scale the stage. He was totally oblivious to the sobbing girl still clinging to him for dear life.

Were the 25,000 spectators with whom I gathered in the chilled evening air on the green·field of Toronto's Varsity Stadium that night about to bare witness to a mindless assassination?

Was this unknown assailant below the footlights, about to make world's headlines as being the rock generation's Lee Oswald and turn the murder play acted onstage into the real thing? The next few seconds were to be decisive.

Suddenly Alice fell to his knees, moaned keeled over, and writhed in agony as a result of being set about the head with a bottle. This caused the girl to scream hysterically: "My God, they've killed him." The would-be assassin halted, momentarily and in those few seconds the police pounced, secured him in a neck lock and dragged him away. He was still threatening murder.

It was a case of the insane at­tacking insanity and Alice, the vic­tim who had narrowly escaped with his life, hollered down the mic­rophone: "You're crazier than us. That's what I like."

By virtue of his ever generated image Alice could well be at the other end of a bullet. He knows it and he fears it.

Just 12 hours after this one un­successful attempt I found Cooper slouched unshaven in his hotel room, indulging himself in his favorite pursuit of watching television and drinking beer. He said: "I wouldn't want to die a violent death and it frightens me that there could be someone out there in the audience - maybe on some kind of drug - who could go suddenly berserk and shoot me.

"Can you imagine a drug crazed kid killing a crazy alcoholic like me, right in the middle of a song?"

Cooper laughed. I didn't.

He continued: "I really hate the idea of death because I have so much fun living. It's the one thing I really fear because like everyone else I know nothing at all about it. That's why I play with death and make fun of it on stage.

"If a jet crashed in the middle of New York City it would draw more people than the Beatles ever did to Shea Stadium because a lot more people would like to see that.

"As far as our act is concerned it's not that we are prying on the fact that people like to see blood. We're just as human as anyone else. It's just that we like the idea of bloodlust as long as it's us who are portraying it. We do it for the audience. We're their outlet. We aren't condoning violence - we're relieving it. The Alice Cooper Show is fantasy, of course, and just because we do it doesn't mean they've got to do it.

"I never get repulsed by an audience's behavior. In fact I think it's real healthy. When I'm hacking the baby doll's head off I imagine that the girls out there screaming for the bits, would like to change places with me ... only they're not in the position to do so.

"For instance the guy who tried to get me on stage last night could have gone and seen 'A Clockwork Orange' or 'Straw Dogs' and been triggered off in much the same way. I honestly think I'm doing an artistic thing on stage, something that's never been done in rock until I came along. Not only am I giving them music but also an image for them to think about. When they see me they're getting five things no other act are offer them .. Maybe one group can give them music and forget about the importance of the visual image. I'm trying to give them as much as is humanly pos­sible. That's everything to me.

"Sometimes I think it's almost obscene that I'm giving them so much. You see, through Alice Cooper I'm showing them what's lurking deep down inside of them."

(From the collection of David Gullberg, scans by Hunter Goatley)